


your name is clairre jaeger, and you don't know how you got here

by CiaranthePage



Category: Homestuck
Genre: DnD Fics, Dungeons & Dragons Character Backstory, F/F, Fantrolls, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, SBURB/SGRUB (Homestuck), Sburb Fan Session (Homestuck), i love this dumbass and nobody can stop me
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-06-01
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:07:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 13
Words: 13,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24087106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CiaranthePage/pseuds/CiaranthePage
Summary: Your name is Clairre Jaeger, you are a mutant, and your friends have somehow convinced you to play some weird new game.It turns out to be a good thing that you've already had such a strange life, considering the events that unfold from there..(fics about my fantroll/d&d character)(graphic depiction of violence tag applies only to a select few chapters)
Relationships: Original Troll Character(s)/Original Troll Character(s) (Homestuck)
Comments: 16
Kudos: 5





	1. feelings and words to describe them

**Author's Note:**

> hello, welcome to my ao3 collection of fics about my fantroll! i love this dumbass very, very much, and i wanted somewhere i could share these all in a collection without sharing my document with a bunch of other random character stuff on it bcus i love showing off the stuff i've written for them  
> a big shout out to my fucking amazing d&d party, i love y'all so much, and you've probably read some or all of these but that's life you know  
> .  
> a quick note: i decided because it's my fic and i can do whatever i want, these are going to be published not in in-universe chronological order but in the order they were written, and context will be in the notes for each chapter!! also, if i slip up on my troll lingo, my bad lol; i only got to act 5 in my reread very recently and i usually write these pieces between 1-3 am  
> .  
> hope you enjoy, whoever you are!!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you have only recently entered the game, and you have a lot of feelings about that.  
> or you would, at least, if you were capable of processing emotions.  
> (originally written dec 22 2019)

You feel quiet.

You feel quiet often, when there’s too much going on or not enough going on, whenever you’re holding an axe in your lap and polishing it with a care you can’t seem to fathom for anything, anyone else (yet?), when you used to sit on the roof and stare across the night sky and wait, watch, listen to words you couldn’t seem to process right, being so far away.

It’s not a bad feeling. Considering how often you’ve felt loud, felt confused, felt stirred up, in the last… days? Hours? Time wasn’t something you’ve thought about since it all started, and you suspect that’s on purpose.

(Six months, someone had said. You feel like they’re lying, because time doesn’t exist here. You don’t know why they lied to you, and you’re not sure if you want to.)

You stare across this new world, its metal glittering and its down inviting, and you’re thinking but your thoughts are quiet, unobtrusive, considering things in hushed whispers like the ones you use when you talk to your axes. This world is yours, but not yours; made for you, but far before you. The others, too; they’re not your worlds, but yet each seems to belong to one of you, be made for you, yet exist before and far beyond your days left breathing.

You take a deep breath. It feels like it gets stuck somewhere, but you let it out anyway. No time to think on that too much; if it becomes a problem, it’ll present itself as a problem, and you’ll deal with it then. Just like everything else you’ve ever done. Just like everything else you’ll ever do. Just like trudging through snow and strolling into forests and diving too deep, deeper than you were ever supposed to go, in the natural order of things.

You feel quiet, but there are voices behind you, and you suspect you won’t feel quiet for too long. Others have that effect on you. You’re not sure if you like it, but it’s something, it’s a change of pace. It’s better than hiding from a world that doesn’t want you. Never wanted you. Always seemed out to get you.

Someone says your name. You snap back to attention, and your footsteps to get up falter and you pray they don’t notice, because somewhere in your bones you still feel like you have to be on guard, because even if this world may or may not have been made for you, even if this world needs you, even if the others here need you, even if there is something bigger for you, you can’t shake the sensation that if you lose your touch, you’ll never feel quiet again.


	2. coping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> feelings are complicated things, and you just have to find new ways to cope with them whenever they pop up.  
> (originally written feb 14, 2020)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning: this chapter contains a description of mild self-injury  
> and brief context: clairre, being a mutant, had to hide out for a long time, including moving hives a few times

You feel Big and you feel Loud and it’s strange to feel both at once.

You shake your head, feeling your hair – slowly growing out, the orange color you dyed it once on a whim clinging to the ends in a way you’re tempted to keep – fly around your head and nearly get tangled on your horns. You want to shout but shouting is dangerous, here, still, so instead you throw yourself onto the floor and try to pay attention to the burn of the carpet against your skin and when that doesn’t stop the Loud feeling you push yourself up and you punch the wall instead, and that hurts, and you don’t stop feeling Loud but you feel a little less Big so it’s better. They just need to balance out and then you can go back to being quiet. There is a whine downstairs and you ignore it because you realize that when you punch the wall the slowly growing collection of weapons on the wall seem to call out in the voice you don’t have back yet.

You punch the wall again to hear the sound and your hand slips after you make contact, but this time it’s not because there are cracks in the wall. Instead, your knuckles are bleeding and there’s a slick on the wall. So you slam your fist into the wall sideways, with the meat of your fingers, and it stings almost the same way so you do it one more time, add in a kick for good measure and just barely miss crushing a nail. You feel a little bit better, and at some point you decide you’ll attend to your knuckles but you still feel Loud and big so you flop down onto the floor again, trying to avoid hitting your horns on the floor because that doesn’t feel great when you’re not expecting it.

There’s a shirt discarded on the floor. You pick it up, twist the fabric, feel it start to stretch and threaten to tear. The fabric is soft and you’d think about how you like this shirt if you didn’t own several identical ones. You dig your fingers in and your nails split one of the seams and it comes apart along carefully placed lines, and the sound is satisfying, and you only feel loud. Loud is fine, loud you can deal with softly, so you wipe your knuckles on the remains of the shirt and wind a smaller piece around your knuckles and shuffle your way to where you hastily stored your polishing supplies and a pile of newly acquired weapons that haven’t been properly taken care of. You sit with a sword in your lap, back pressed against one of the empty racks and digging into your shoulder blades, and you begin to polish.


	3. an interesting day and a lesson in forethought (that you will ignore)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for some reason, your group decides to return to what you've begun to think of as the Cursed Building.  
> returning to the Cursed Building goes about as well as that sentence implies.  
> (originally written march 28 2020)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning! this is a chapter that pertains to the violence warning! this is a fic about clairre losing a limb!  
> said clairre is incredibly checked out of the situation, but there is still mentions of blood, tissue, etc, and the process of removing that limb.  
> and yes, this actually happened. it was a fucking wild day and i rolled very bad and there is a reason i call clairre a dumbass  
> brief context: cerberus is clairre's denizen, and they met said denizen far, far too early, and barely got of there alive

You’re pretty sure you’re supposed to be in pain.

Your arm is being crushed, that much is sure, you felt the now-familiar crunch of bones when your arm got pinned under the stone. There’s blood seeping out from under the stones and it’s an orange you didn’t realize until now you had gotten unused to seeing (it looks so different, pouring from new wounds). You remember being in pain last time you came to this building, when you broke your ankle, but that was mostly overshadowed by everything else that immediately followed. And there are, judging by the cracks, bigger bones in your arm than your ankle. Or maybe more? Maybe both. You realize with a startling clarity that you’ve never actually sat down and looked at a skeleton, and it seems irrelevant.

You don’t want to die, you think. If nothing else, you want to get out of this building before you die, because this building is definitely cursed, and this planet is cursed, and you wish you’d all decided to go somewhere else. You would’ve taken the cold planet over this one, even! And you don’t particularly like the cold! Cold like what you’d imagine your fingertips would be feeling, if you hadn’t lost sensation there entirely. The blood is pooling around your feet.

Your friends are talking to you, asking you questions, freaking out. You mostly hear them, but you feel like you did coming out of the room with Cerberus, like your brain has left a shell behind to deal with the world around you.

Your kismesis is encouraging you to use your “magic powers.” Magic powers you’re pretty sure you don’t have? Other people do, they can make lasers and glow if they really, really want to, and teleport people. You can swing axes, and you can swing them well, though with a frown you wonder if you’ll still be able to, after this. She insists you do, actually, and she has a plan to incite them, if her insistances to your friends are making it through your brain right.

You wonder what your arm actually feels like. Where the skin is ripping next to the stone stings, and more blood is pooling at your feet. It’s going to get stuck in your sandals, at this point, and you’d wrinkle your nose if you felt like you had any control over your facial expressions.

Another friend volunteers for whatever plan they have. Her slipping on a glove and kneeling next to you makes your heart attempt to skip a beat and your cheeks try to warm, but you push that to the side to try and figure out what the fuck they want. And then she sticks her arm under the well, too, and for a second your vision is a bright, vivid blue, and your hair is whipped around your head. The weight lifts. You fall back. Your arm is free. The wind is gone.

Your arm does not look good. In fact, if someone had presented this to you and told you it was livestock partially mashed and on its way to being ground meat, you probably would have accepted their word for it. It’s never going to work again, and if you weren’t still checked out you would be upset about that. Some of your axes are two-handed, you think somewhere else. Getting a new arm wouldn’t be impossible but it would be a learning process you don’t know if you have the brainspace for. The pain is coming back, and there are tears running down your face but you make no move to brush them away. Nothing diminishes the concern everyone seems to have for you.

It has to go. Everyone seems in agreement about it. You’ve all healed before, you’ve all dealt with injuries before, you watched more than one of your friends nearly die and then come back with only scars to prove it was real at all, but there’s something so final about watching your arm dangle by your side and start staining your new pants. Someone says to cut it off. You have axes, after all, it would be simple work. You are still crying. You can only think about how difficult it is to clean your blood from weapons, as bright as it is. All of your cleaning supplies are at home and your home is on this planet but you don’t want to come back here for a long while. Your kismesis offers to bite it off. It’d be easier, you think; she mentions a kick-ass scar, which your brain agrees with somewhere far off. You don’t want to bother cleaning up all of this. Your mind teeters on the edge of darkness. Despite protests, a decision is made.

There are teeth in your arm, your arm is gone, the pain is all in the stump where you once had a left arm, you try to scream but nothing comes out, and the whole world goes dark.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay i've been trying to avoid writing end-notes so i can just roll out these chapters but i wanted to step in and say that clairre's tangent about the skeletons is one of my favorite things i've ever written about them


	4. death comes later than you thought, sooner than you expected, and somehow never at all

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you're not sure what's going on, all the time, but the chance to cheat death you'll take.  
> even if technically it means facing death head-on.  
> you trust that everyone else knows what's going on.  
> (originally written april 11, 2020)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning! this chapter is not particularly graphic, but it does contain clairre dying and then coming back to life.  
> brief context: the "mythical creature" is a cherub that our group knows, who is very sweet; clairre is a prospit dreamer!  
> also, try to guess the godtier ; )

In another time, this probably would’ve fazed you. A supposedly mythical creature calling you to a bedroom on a moon, one supposedly yours but hauntingly empty instead; her telling you that there was a you, here, once, a second you, a second chance, but that someone stole it away before you were ever even aware of its existence (but certainly wish you’d known about, considering how many times you ditched homes and friends to avoid death); her telling you that this is unfair, because everyone else has a second chance, and that she has a plan to give you more than just one. But you’re one arm down and flushed with new feelings and nothing seems strange to you, anymore. If things could faze you by this point you wouldn’t have made it out of the last two weeks (two weeks? Three? Time had already escaped you before all of this, but judging by how long they told you you were asleep) intact, sane, or maybe even alive.

Probably that last one. The space where you used to have a left arm feels emptier.

She also promises you a possible new arm, which is nice, even if you’ve grown relatively used to moving around with just the one. It was like she was reading your thoughts.

Maybe she did. You wouldn’t be surprised.

She takes your hand, and you try not to pull it away because it’s not the same kind of hand that you’ve grown somehow used to holding, it’s not strangely awkward but somehow gentle, it doesn’t feel like it could slip away at any second but maybe, just maybe, wants you to hold on anyway. It’s the grip of someone who’s about to carry you off of a high cliff. Which she does, because she sprouts wings like you’ve never seen and carries you out of the tower and only through experience do you avoid screaming. You feel eyes on you, but that’s fine. You’re stared at every time you come here, every time you go to one of these planets of little chess people, and in the midst of trying not to scream you wonder if it’s because that other you died here, and they saw, but now you’re here again. The universe gives you no answer, and neither does the one holding you, so maybe she can’t read thoughts. Or she’s just focused on where you’re going.

Which is down a well. You do your best not to throw up, and shut your eyes against the memories. There’s no time for those. There’s never time for those. You don’t have time for them.

There are beds in the center of the planet. Which would’ve been strange, except everything is strange about this world, and you also realize a few moments later that they are not beds, they are slabs of stone in various colors only pretending to be beds, and the temple holding Cerberus gives you a hint as to which is yours.

She sets you down on it anyway. You have to die, she says. Just once, and then, if you’re careful, never again. Or at least, not permanently. The words she’s using are a little confusing and you’re still reeling from the strange circle that you’ve taken, losing first your arm and now your life at the bottom of a well.

But you always expected to die, didn’t you? You never expected to live your full possible lifespan, possibly never escape the planet where you’d been born. That just wasn’t a reality for someone like you, for someone who took and didn’t give back, who ran from justice, who had disconnected themself so easily from friends for the sake of their own head. It was a miracle (or destiny?) that you’d lived long enough to play this game. And someone had even already tried behind your back to rid this world of you before you ever knew you’d be here.

Your head spins, the way it does when you think too long about the things that have happened to you, the things you’ve seen and faced and done. You stabilize yourself. You need to die once to never die again. Okay. You can do that. You’d always figured doing it yourself was better than letting someone else do it.

And then you fail to do it, which feels like a cruel move on the universe’s part, and you curse it silently. If not at your hands, then, as quickly as possible.

The arrow hits you before you’ve quite registered that there was an arrow knocked in her beautiful bow. It pins your head to the stone underneath you, makes everything set alight in your blood before it starts to numb. Your remaining fingers twitch. There is another arrow, right alongside the first. You are dying. You are dead?

It doesn’t feel like death should. It feels... empty. No, not empty, because you’re there, and there’s something pulling you away, trying to rip you away from your body and toward the bubbles you recognize from your dreams. But no, no you are pinned to this stone, as much by the arrows as by some force. You always thought dying would be like turning off your laptop, and then nothing. Maybe it normally is? This isn’t regular dying.

And then you’re not dying. Energy is rushing through you, more energy than you’ve ever had, and you’d shout if you had any control over your body. You feel different. Your clothes are different. Your body feels different. The space on your left is filled again, but it’s not what you were expecting. Your body feels different. You manage to open your eyes. Your body feels different. You are surrounded by light. Your body feels different. You feel _powerful_.

There’s nothing pinning you to the stone. You sit up. There is blood on the stone, but no familiar crinkle of dried blood in your hair. You brush your hair over your shoulder. It is gold instead of orange, a bright gold that’s not like the goldblood you know but the jewelry hanging off of highbloods. You’re wearing a blue, a weird color choice for you, and you have shoes instead of sandals, which is mildly disappointing.

You have a left arm. It is a beautiful thing. Porcelain, flexible, something you could swing an ax with, decorated with the blue symbol you will later realize is also emblazoned on your shirt, the one from the temple walls. You squeeze both of your hands and the new one makes a pleasant sound. Cool.

There is something on your back. A cape, you realize. No, wait, wings. Beautiful wings. Butterfly wings. Butterfly wings with a section, the one mirroring your new arm, made of the same porcelain, wound together with shimmering string.

You don’t know if you feel alive or not, but you take a big breath, so you must be. If this is life, it’s a new kind of life. One with less conditions, you suppose. Or more? Less conditions for life and more for death. Yeah. That’s what she told you.

Oh, wait. She tells you to use your powers. You almost ask which ones, but you remember the well before you do, the blue wind and the force that pulled at your soul.

The wind you make next is no breeze, no counterweight for a tower of stone. It is a tornado. You aren’t sure whether or not you’re afraid of this.

Your new mythical friend tells you you should tell the others. You are full of a new confidence. Yeah, you should. You wonder if they’ll be excited. You hope they’ll be excited. You hope they’re okay. Something twinges in the back of your head. Your head twitches but your friend doesn’t seem to notice. That’s fine. If nobody notices it didn’t happen. You hope again that they’re all okay.

Your new wings are strong. You feel strong. You are strong. This is good. You’ll strangle death before it has a chance to get you for good, you decide. Everything will be so much better.

Your new arm is heavier than your old one, as you fly, but somewhere you wonder if they’ll like it, too; always studious, those two that haven’t strayed far from your thoughts, or at least curious. You keep flying. Things will be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you tried to guess their godtier, or didn't want to: they're a knight of breath! and also got rid of their sleeves almost immediately after this fic ends, bcus they hate sleeves and wanted to show off their cool new arm to their ~~friends~~ ~~crushes~~ ~~space gfs~~ almost-matesprits


	5. if you don't get caught

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> before the game, before your friends, before it all, you were nothing if not a bit impulsive and a lot avoidant.  
> (originally written april 15, 2020)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is one of clairre's backstory fics! some context i've touched on but never fully explained: clairre is a mutant bronzeblood, close enough that they kind of skirted by but could technically be killed for it, and also has extremely poor impulse control, which as they got older manifested as a tendency to steal weapons, since weapons and especially axes are their favorite thing in the world.

You don’t really know… _why_ you just did that.

The weapon in your hands is not yours, not by a long shot. In fact, you are still standing outside of the house where it actually belongs, holding the sword with a grip so tight you’re worried you’re going to rip open the scabs on your newly-healed knuckles. You don’t know if they saw you, either, because the moment you decided to break away from your wanderings and in through a balcony door, the actual owner of this house was downstairs in a fight that you’re hoping they lost but more than likely are winning, because the screams have stopped but no one is coming upstairs to comb the house for anything good.

A reasonable person would’ve put it back, considering your life is on the line the second anyone realizes you’re here. You are not a reasonable person. Or, well, you’re trying to be, but the part of your brain that commands reasonable thought is much smaller than the part of your brain that commands impulses. You store the blade away for safekeeping. It’s yours now, you decide. Fair and square if you don’t get caught.

If you don’t get caught. Your blood is all over the floor and you always forget that it’s not the right shade to pin on a neighbor.

If you don’t get caught. If all they have to go on is blood and distance, you can change one of those things.

If you don’t get caught. Surely your lusus won’t mind moving.

If you don’t get caught. You don’t have many friends here, anyway, and you can probably finish whatever school you had left wherever you end up.

If you don’t get caught. You jump down from the balcony and only through a roll do you avoid breaking your ankle.

There’s red all over your hands now but it’s fine, you wipe it on your pants and you ignore the body on the ground and it’s fine. It’s fine. You didn’t know them. Probably. If you never see their face then you can’t confirm if you knew them and if you can’t confirm if you knew them you can’t be sad when you leave this entire neighborhood behind and run. There’s red on your shoes. It’ll come off on the ground. And if it doesn’t, then you can find new shoes.

This is not a good plan. Your ability to reason starts to come back as you run, and there are definitely footsteps behind you. This is not a good plan, and you will be caught, and you will die. Probably. Ever since the first couple times you just… took things, you figured it would kill you. You don’t want to die. You feel like the universe doesn’t, either.

This is not a good plan. It will keep you alive. This is not a good plan. But you aren’t meant to die just yet. Someone tries to grab you. You trip. You escape. This is not a good plan. But you’re not dead yet.


	6. school isn't all bad

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> survival is a tricky thing, a darkness to navigate, a predicament you never asked for, but occasionally there are lights in the darkness.  
> (originally written april 26, 2020)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> eyy welcome back to another back story fic! this is set _wayyy_ early in clairre's life, back before the moving and the crime, when they were just a kid

The image sits in the back of your head, not giving you a chance to breathe. Your hands, shaking in front of you, one dripping the not-right-bronze from a cut. Your lusus standing over you, growing and snapping at an older gold blood who saw you. The gold blood not standing there for much longer.

They would’ve called the drones on you, you know that. Couldn’t risk drawing attention to themself, after all, and what if someone else had found you out? Then they would’ve been in trouble.

Your brain fuzzes over and you get the distinct impression that even if the image won’t leave you alone, you won’t be able to think about it much. You try to tune back into what you’re supposed to be doing, and the fact you’re messing with something.

You’re not even sure where you got the stick in your hands, or if it is a stick, because it might be a writing utensil and you’re just not paying nearly enough attention to figure it out. You don’t try to pick at the memory, but you do try to think about the implications. That’s what you’re supposed to be doing. Nobody gets far without considering the consequences of their actions (nobody in your position, at least).

Secrecy is vital to your survival, as your lusus has stressed. As the drones you see in nearby neighborhoods stress. As some voice in the back of your head stresses. As the people who go “missing” around you stress. You cannot risk drawing attention to yourself. Attention would spell certain death for you.

You are not particularly good at not drawing attention to yourself, sometimes.

Well, no, that’s wrong. You’re still alive, so you’ve been doing fine not drawing attention to yourself. No, the problem is the fact that  _ you  _ are the source of what  _ is  _ drawing people’s attention: things going missing, a particular desk being constantly empty, not-right stains on the floor from where you’ve cut yourself on the knife you’ve only just started to carry and even more recently started to learn how to use.

Cuts that you’ve wrapped in so many bandages you’re having trouble using your hands, even when they aren’t buried in a sweatshirt that you borrowed (”borrowed”) from another classmate who no one’s seen in a few days. That part’s not your fault, right? You hope. You two weren’t close.

It’s not like anyone pays attention to the spacey kid who sits in the back of the room, right?

“Clairr?”

Shit.

You look up from the spot in space where you were staring. It’s just a classmate. She has an expression you recognize as genuine concern.

“Yeah?”

“Just wanted to make sure you’re okay!” she says, sitting next to you. “You’ve been spacing out a lot recently.”

That’s right, class hasn’t started. You didn’t sleep, so you got here early. And her name is... Lindie. She’s nice. You try to suppress the image a bit. You try to focus on the shape of her horns and the way she leans on her hand as she looks at you expectantly. You wonder if she’s noticed the sweatshirt.

“It’s nothing,” you say, waving the hand with no bandages on it. The stick is, in fact, a stick, which you’re still holding in that hand. “Just... thinking.”

“Are you sure?” she says, and her frown makes you sad.

“Yeah,” is what you attempt to say, but half of it is mumbled into the hood of your sweatshirt.

“Mmm, okay,” she says, and she’s not frowning but she doesn’t seem convinced. “Hey, do you... want to hang out?”

You chew on the inside of your lip. You should say no. Everything in your screams no. You are the kid in the back of the class who no one notices, right?

Except someone’s already noticed you. Your cuts are healing, you decide. Dodging everyone is more suspicious than going along with this, right?

“Sure,” you say, only partially to your sweatshirt this time.

“Sweet!” Lindie says, and you can only hope this isn’t another mistake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you're thinking "clairr? i thought it was clairre?"  
> count the letters in "clairre," and i will let you theorize as to why that is  
> also fun fact: i made up lindie on a whim and then got incredibly attached to her, which you'll see in the next chapter, lol


	7. extinguished in an instant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for once, there is someone besides your lusus who doesn't believe you're merely a burden to be shed, that you are a being capable of being loved.  
> you wish you could believe that, too.  
> (originally written april 26, 2020)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> one of clairre's deepest fears is unexpected declarations of feelings : )

Lindie is nice to you. Nicer than everyone else, at least. She likes to sit next to you in class and invites you over sometimes. She’s a bronze blood, like you (like you’re supposed to be), doesn’t question why you sometimes show up to class or her house with a new sign on or why you have bandages on your knuckles, tells you all about what she might do one day, up in space, what she’d like to do and see. She seems solid in her idea that she has a future, and it’s refreshing, getting out of your own nihilistic funk to listen to someone who believes in… anything. Your lusus believes in you, to be sure, but a lusus’s love is different than another living, breathing troll suggest that maybe you two can go off to space together. You almost believe her, sometimes. That if you work hard enough with the weapons your lusus keeps coming home with then you two can have a life up in space that might be better than this.

(If nothing else, you pretend because you want that better life for her, because when she thinks about it she smiles.)

Her hive is nice, too. Cozy. Her lusus likes to sleep next to you when you play games together. There are soft things to sit on and her meal block is actually pretty organized, all things considered, and the hive’s tucked away in a corner of your neighborhood that rarely sees the drones. These days, with things tucked into pockets and bandages burnt in fires behind your hive and your slowly growing confidence with knives, you rarely feel safe when your lusus can’t watch you, but at her hive you almost manage.

She calls you friends, one time, with a soft lilt in her voice, almost asleep on your shoulder. You were playing games, but she’d started to doze off, your fingers lazily intertwined in your lap. It makes your chest flutter, and you swallow it down, because fluttering feelings could go very wrong for either or both of you. Even if you can almost believe her when she talks about your future, something in your bones, whether it be the guilt in your heart or the blood in your veins, tells you that you two won’t be sharing the same path. You say it back anyway. She gives you that smile, the one that she gives you when you can say with some conviction that you’re okay.

You stick together through school. She is the only person who does, really. Others fade in and out, and she’s better at making friends than you are (though you manage to pick up a few online, because online no one hears the weird stiffness in your voice or notices that you never seem to stick to a sign), but she comes back to you anyway. You almost start to understand why. You mostly just bask in each time she takes your hands in hers and holds them there, whatever the case may be.

Lindie is the only person who doesn’t suspect you when everything starts to come crashing down. Even if you did it, and you know you did it. She takes your hands when the whispers get loud and you almost tell her what you did, what you have hiding in your hive, stashed away with the rest of your weapons, because you cannot stand the idea of lying to her. But you don’t. You let her hold your hands through the pain and she is the only person you will say goodbye to.

“Goodbye,” you say, in the room where you have spent so long with her, your truth on her floor and staining your hands as if you’d spilled her blood yourself.

“I don’t understand?” she says, seeking your face for something, anything to tell her that she isn’t lying, because she does understand.

“I have to go.”

“Why? Clairr, please –”

“No, please. It’ll be safer for you.”

“How?”

“I’m not.” You swallow, and it hurts. “Lindie, I’m not like you.”

“What?”

You don’t have time for this. But you do, because you have to. You unravel the bandages, show her the blood you haven’t had time to wash off. There is recognition on her face, but she is not angry. You almost want her to be angry.

But instead, she takes your hand, she holds it in hers. The touch of your lips is fleeting, and you do not forget it. You will never be able to.

You tell her you hope she finds what she’s looking for in space. Her face says everything she does not tell you, but only barely lets you leave, your mutant blood staining her fingers. She tells you she hopes you find peace, wherever you go.

You tell her you will.

She is the only one you will ever say goodbye to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :,,)  
> (shout out to a friend of mine for accidentally making me escalate lindie's importance to "one of the reasons clairre has deep-set emotional issues")


	8. this was always inevitable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> you've dodged imp attacks, death, an ax to the face, certain death at the paws of three dogs, and faceplanting a second time after learning to fly.  
> you cannot run away from your feelings, anymore.  
> your past comes back to haunt you.  
> (originally written may 3, 2020)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning! this chapter is a description of a panic attack, including mentions of gore, self-injury, and a lot of screaming  
> brief context: everything has gone to shit; one of the characters clairre has a massive flush crush on just revealed a Big Secret, as did someone else :eyes:; also clairre's lusus was a big dog

You’re on the Battlefield.

You shouldn’t be, which you’re more aware of than you have been of anything for a few weeks. You were in space just a few... seconds ago. It has to have been a few seconds ago. You still feel the shift in your stomach from when you land after flying for a while. You try to swallow the growing panic like you usually do but it rises again like a tide, and you try to swallow again but it pushes further up, and you are hauntingly aware of the tears that start falling from your eyes like the rain just a few, what, hours before? You notice them around the same time you register that there’s someone next to you, someone who normally would be a comfort to have around except of  _ course  _ your brain is still reeling from what she’d said just before you all left.

No, despite your reeling thoughts, you wish you could just curl up against her and crumble, because right now you feel yourself coming apart in a way you haven’t in... too long. Long enough that any other day you would be kneeling over, wrecked by brain fuzz, but today you’ve learned so many things you want to wish you didn’t know that whatever block you’d set up for yourself is gone. You curl into yourself, hands pressed over your eyes as you try desperately not to recall that day.

It does not work, because you aren’t on the Battlefield anymore, you’re not in the game anymore, you’re pressed against the wall of an abandoned building trying to stem the orange tears flooding your face, and it is not working. Even as your lusus licks your face over and over, trying to clear the tears, it’s not working, you’re still crying, and you are not sobbing so much as screaming. They are not screams of terror, necessarily. Screams of pain, maybe. The kind that, maybe on some other planet, where people were a little kinder and a little less likely to kill on the first sight of weakness, would attract the attention of a neighborhood family, who could try to calm you down and find where you’re supposed to be and keep you company until the screams stop.

You aren’t on that planet, nor are you sure it even exists, so instead you scream until your throat starts to hurt and then shove the hand on the side where your lusus keeps licking your face in your mouth because maybe the taste of blood will stop the roar of thoughts in your head.

It does not.

It makes it worse.

You knew that, you always have, and there are little semi-circles of scars you’ve hardly taken care of all over the back of your hand from where you have tried this so many other times.

Instead, the roar continues.

Blood, blood, blood, blood that maybe others your age should be able to handle but you can never seem to let go of. Dreams of your lusus, dead by your hand, dead by another’s hand, dead by the universe’s hand. Your own death, repeated over and over but with something wrong each time: the color of the walls, one day, the color of the knife the next, the actual sense that you weren’t awake at all for it on so, so many. The last time you ever saw the one troll in this world you’ve flushed red for, her expression torn to shreds and your mutant blood staining her hands, putting her in the very danger you left to protect her from. Every brush with death you’ve ever had -- the fingers at your throat, the teetering on the edge of cliffs, the blades resting against your ribs and threats you know are not empty. The mere idea that one day, you will die, and it will likely be before you get to see the space you were enchanted with stories of, or even before the others your age have to start worrying about being shipped off to space. Death is inevitable and you’ve spent so long waiting for your luck to run out.

Are you still screaming? Are you still crying? You can’t feel your legs, having been curled up here so long. Your face is sticky, your hands are cracked and dry with blood (whose, you can’t remember, because not all of it is yours), sunlight threatens to creep in through the windows. Your lusus grows more agitated by the second. You cannot hear her cries. All you can hear is the rush of blood in your ears, every voice you knew was snuffed out but you pretended you’d never heard, every crash of armories -- your own and others’ -- crumbling to pieces, disturbed by the wind or a shaky hand or a finger trying not to be cut, every rapid footfall as you tried to outrun the sun, you --

You black out. You crumble under the weight of your own exhaustion -- how long were you crying? How long? And where are you, now? -- and the world falls out from under you. Somewhere, someone wonders if you’ll wake up somewhere safe. With someone safe. Somewhere else, someone knows. And you know you will inevitably wake up and pretend this never happened, everything tucked away to ignore for a while longer.

You are on the Battlefield.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so when i am posting this chp, it is the day before the session in which this might actually happen, and i feel like there'd be poetry in that if i wasn't fucking terrified lmao


	9. a set of theoretical meetings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in a time long past, a set of meetings may or may not have taken place, with people you may or may not have known.  
> (originally written may 9, 2020)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay so this may or may not be canon, bcus these involve my friends' characters and i forgot to ask if they wanted these to be canon. will be back if the situation changes re: that  
> these two will eventually be their matesprits and that's why i wanted to do these two first jfkalds, may be back with more versions later!!  
> 

You finally see a building, and in the slow threat of approaching dawn it looks as welcoming as any other abandoned building you’ve ever spent a day in.

It’s no new hive, that’s for sure; when the threat of the sun falls away you can take in the walls with their poorly-patched holes, the ceilings lower than your lusus would prefer, the silence settled around everything that sits in the back of your thinkpan and makes you cringe. The floorplan feels too open, too exposed, too tall. Your sweeps of hiding in the smallest spaces you can find have trained you well.

It’s enough, though, and even once you’re inside seems abandoned.

You collapse in what was probably a main room, the windows of which are thankfully long boarded up. Your lusus curls around you, nuzzling your hand and asking for pets. You comply, letting yourself sink into her fur. You’re exhausted, and while you know you’re only another few day’s travel from where you’ve been promised a new hive, even your endurance is running thin. And your rations. Shit, you hadn’t even thought about that. You’d slam your hand into your face if that wouldn’t take energy you no longer have. This building seems like an old hive, maybe it’s only recently abandoned, and you’ll be able to dig through some wreckage to find something for you and your lusus.

You don’t know when you fall into a restless, aching sleep, but you know when you wake from it, because your lusus starts with a low, rumbling growl.

“Oh!” you hear a voice say.

There’s a troll on the staircase you passed on your way into the room. She stands at the halfway point, and you can’t make out much about her. Nice clothes, sure. Not a speck of color on her. Maybe your age. Something about her just seems... weird. Your lusus has not stopped growling.

“Don’t mind her,” you manage around a mouthful of sleepy fluff.

“No problem at all,” she says. She makes no moves to get closer. There is something in her eyes, but she smiles. “It seems we’ve stumbled across the same building.”

“Mhm,” you manage, rubbing your eye. Your hand is mere atoms away from grabbing an ax to start swinging, but she’s making no threatening movements yet. “We’re moving on once the sun goes down.”

“I see,” she says, still smiling. “Well, if you need it, I’m here to help.”

“With?”

“Anything,” she says. You wonder if the tilt of her head means people don’t normally ask follow-ups.

“I’ll let you know,” you say, turning over to face away from her. It’s still daylight, out, you just want to sleep.

Something lands on your arm. It’s a card, a small one, with a... somehow familiar troll discord tag. “So you can let me know!” is her only explanation before her footsteps disappear upstairs.

You don’t know what compels you to keep it, you really don’t, but you stuff it in your pocket and there it stays for a long, long time.

\-------

You’d think, once getting your new hive, you would’ve settled in.

And you have, in some respects. You have a recuperacoon there, finally able to get actual sleep; you’ve polished and hung most the weapons you don’t need to keep close by the feel safe, with a pile more polished and ready to be sorted waiting for you; you eat in the same place multiple times in a row; your balcony gives you a view of the surrounding hives without making you feel exposed. Your lusus seems happy, too. As if she’s finally found the place she’s been looking for ever since your first hive was no longer a safe place to keep you.

But once on the run, always on the run, you suppose.

So you strike out, sometimes. When the neighborhood seems quiet. When the drones have come and gone. When the wind of dusk calls you outside. Your lusus comes, occasionally, striding by your side. You always carry enough axes to feel safe.

Like now, when you’re not-entirely-lost in a forest a few hours away from your hive. The moons are on your side, and you don’t fear daylight catching up to you, which is a welcome relief, but that does nothing to soothe the uneasiness that seems to leak from the trees around you. You can’t tell if they’re uneasy, and you’re merely picking up on their emanations, or if they’re trying to scare you off. The thought itself just sounds idiotic when it crosses your mind. Your lusus nudges your back.

You look up to where she’s pointing with her nose, and you see a building. A half-crumbled building, one not even worth being a daytime shelter. Something is sticking out of the top, something that could be a telescope or could be a robot arm. You don’t know enough about technology to tell the difference, nor do you care to try, because your lusus is on the move again before you can try to figure out what she was looking at.

Your lusus leads you to the door of the building, a door that’s too narrow for her to fit into. She lies down in front of it, rests her head on her paws. She wants you to go in. Okay, you can do that.

Inside is more technology, more technology, more techno --

And a figure.

A figure shorter than you, with white hair and horns and casual clothes, working on something you can’t see on the table in front of them. You stop. A one-handed ax is in your hand before you think about what you’re doing. The figure turns.

“... hello?” they say, and you put the ax away because oh, shit, they’re a goldblood and the few goldbloods you’ve gone toe-to-toe with before and sometimes they steal your shit with their mind powers.

“Hi,” you say. You run out of things to say.

“What brings you out here?” they ask, setting down whatever they were working on.

You try not to look as nervous as you’re attempting to feel. “Just exploring,” you say, shrugging one shoulder. “I, uh, is this...?”

“My lab!” they say, and their smile is surprisingly genuine. You don’t know if that’s more or less unsettling than before. “Or, well, an extension of it.”

Definitely more unsettling. “C-cool!” you manage. “I, uh, don’t want to keep interrupting you, then. I’ll just... leave.”

They look like they want to say something else, something maybe of concern or maybe of inquiry, but you turn around and you leave, back out of the forest, your confused lusus at your heels. You don’t know why you just... walked out like that. Maybe you’ll come back, maybe you won’t. You take out your palmhusk to message your group chat, something simple and vague to hide your nerves. A friend responds, and their text seems familiar, but you don’t manage to place it before your lusus goes bounding off somewhere else, leading you after her and away from the lab.


	10. everything you dreaded, everything you wanted, and more

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it has been a shit day, you have not stopped crying for who knows how long, and there is only one way to fix anything you've ruined today.  
> you just hope it'll work.  
> (and oh, how it does)  
> (originally written may 9, 2020)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i think this might be the first fic where i mention people's names?? probably  
> anyway, jaynne, zierre, and clairre are matesprits, aerith is clairre's kismesis, ritzie sucks, shit went down today but we finally got the kiss scene these two deserve so there's a bandaid on the spire-shaped hole in the middle of our hearts jfdkals. but also someone went grimdark which wasn't fun!

So much has happened.

It’s enough that you’ve been thinking nonstop, crying nonstop, bubbling over with anger. Three of the people closest to your bloodpusher, all taken out in the span of… hours? Minutes? It feels like it could’ve been months between seeing Zierre crumpled on top of a spire of ice and Aerith disappearing from any comprehension and Jaynne collapsing beside you, full of so many arrows you hadn’t bothered to count before you picked her up and just started to _fly_. Fly her to safety, to a second chance, to your final shot at proving the voice in the back of your thinkpan that always tells you that everyone you love will fall because of your mistakes wrong.

You’ve only just found out the secret she was hiding from you all, it feels like, but as you try to find your balance between holding her tight and not further pushing the arrows into her body her lifeblood is dying your arms indigo. You try not to think about blood too much, because when you think about blood you think about Zierre’s gold blood leaking down the pillar and you think about the stain of your own blood you let on a helping hand so long ago and you think about the last time you saw Aerith in person, pinned under a boulder and bleeding. But something has changed, something in your head, and you cannot stop thinking. Your thoughts race, race, race, race, race, just like your body through the stars to the quest cocoon that will save Jaynne.

You focus in on that. You focus in on her weight in her arms and her few, strangled breaths and the fact that you can see her planet just ahead of you. You swore you wouldn’t lose anyone else today. And you’ve technically already failed at that, sure, but if you gave up after breaking promises you never would’ve made it into the game in the first place.

You swallow down the tears that leak into your throat every time you try to stop their flow. You keep flying. You keep flying. You keep flying.

This _has_ to work.

Finding it is short work. Through a haze Jaynne points you in the right direction, and you’re surprised, by the way it’s lit up, that you never noticed it before now (or maybe not so surprised, because since everything crumbled around you, you have noticed so, so much more, as if the world is suddenly open to you, or you to the world). You can only thank whatever higher beings might be listening, now, that you didn’t get injured in the fight. You wonder if Ritzie would’ve done it, tried to kill you. She certainly threatened to. Maybe her shots were meant for either of you, to either take out an unneeded liability or to finish the job she started when she showed you how to ascend.

Jokes on her, you suppose. She wasn’t going to be getting rid of either of you.

Your hands are shaking with a rage you’ve never felt before, but still you are as gentle as possible when you set Jaynne down on what might be her last chance. You kneel beside her, simply out of instinct, of the need to keep the closeness between you two as long as you can. Your hands are still clasped together. Neither of you seems to notice. Or maybe you do, but she is having a hard time dying, and the fear running through Jaynne’s eyes behind spinning gears of thought makes you simply not want to let go. She is still full of arrows, and there is still blood on your arms. The world feels as if it’s at a standstill.

She starts to speak, shaking and uncertain. She starts her statement with an _if this doesn’t work_ and you almost miss the rest of what she says, how she thanks you in a quiet voice, because you simply pull her toward you, and you insist there will be no _if_. Not if you have anything to say. And you do. Because you’re not losing anyone else today. You don’t want to lose anyone else ever again.

The light that emanates from the cocoon breaks your closeness for the first time, if only because you don’t want to be regenerating when she emerges and being burnt to a crisp by the glowing light would put a damper on that plan. So you wait, just far enough away that you won’t get hurt, and you find yourself thinking again, about someone else.

Lindie. Even without saying it aloud -- you have not said her name aloud since you departed, and even now you do not want to break that streak -- the word tastes bitter on your tongue. You try to wipe away the tears, try not to think about the flutters in your chest that you pretended were not there, that now echo in your chest whenever you think about Jaynne and Zierre that you still couldn’t fully admit to yourself. Try not to think about the look on her face when you left her behind, her lips stained with a bit of your blood and her hand pressed against her chest. Try not to think about the fact that she was long gone when you got the courage to go back to your old hive.

The light filters around you. Your thought shift, shift to the spire on a distant planet, and to when you were holding Jaynne on the Battlefield, your options lined up in front of you. You could’ve kissed her, you think, and you almost did. But you couldn’t let Ritzie even have a chance of getting her, not again, not after everything Ritzie had done to you. And yet… your chest tightens. There’s a thought on the tip of your tongue and it compels you to turn around.

Oh.

There she is.

Jaynne, dressed in yellow and orange, hair undone, indigo wings holding her in the air. The sun on her shirt is oddly appropriate, considering how your heart seems to alight with pure, unfiltered red love. She looks around, she spots you, and you are connecting before a conscious thought can even form in your mind, because if there was a time in your life for a kiss it is here, now, after you stared down death and told it to _fuck right off_.

Flight puts you on equal footing, for once, and you cradle her face in your hands to kiss her and you hope your mouth doesn’t taste like blood. Her arms are around you, and you are both laughing, and you are both crying, and you’re not sure who sends you into a spin above a glowing lake of broken glass but that doesn’t matter because you kiss her again, and a third time. In this moment, in her arms, you can almost suppress the thoughts running through your head of everything else, because here at least, you are safe, and she is safe, and the power of gods is in the air. The wind rustles your hair and you feel nothing if not overwhelming light and luck.

Luck. Luck guides your eyes to the watch on your wrists, still cradled between you even as something, someone tells you to look, look for Zierre. Any minutes before, you think, you would’ve been afraid to see only the same sight all over. But still cradled against Jaynne, standing here, you can’t muster up the fear anymore.

She’s alive.

Not only that, but it seems Aerith is too, and if you weren’t still tearing up you would’ve started to sob. Alive and winged and draped in the same magic clothes, a pure shot of relief as you close your eyes to pretend for a moment that everything really _is_ okay.

And then the sky goes black.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the original doc of this is just called " _kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss_ " if you were wondering


	11. to let go, to hold on, to cherish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it's the little things, really, that get to you. your new thoughts. your new situation. the good, the bad, the unintentionally intimate.  
> (a familiar scene in another light)  
> (originally written may 13-15 2020)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EDIT: [jaynne's player wrote a cool as hell version of this scene](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23720767/chapters/58813279) and you should go read it, and also all of their jaynne stuff bcus it's fantastic  
> yes, this is about the same scene as the last chapter, but that's just bcus i'm gay and while a lot of cool shit happened in that session i only feel qualified to write about the stuff clairre was there for jfkadlsf  
> i also wanted to write about clairre messing with jaynne's hair bcus we decided that in the session but i don't think i touched on it last chp? who knows, but it's here now, and it escalated a lot from there  
> oh! some extra context: persephone is aerith's gf and our one human player and she's the one who went grimdark

You're having so many thoughts all at once.

It's almost, arguably, too many for the situation; you're supposed to be coming up with ideas to get off the Battlefield and instead you're thinking about your old life and old loves and new loves and how soft Jaynne's hair is and how her presence at your side is the only thing keeping you from blowing away, how she's gripping your hand like it's the only thing in the world. How you could tuck up against her, if only you weren't in a warzone, how the puzzle pieces of your relationship could fit together when (not _if_ , you decide, _when_ ) you get Zierre back. How you could possibly go about getting her back, the key to which sits at the back of your mind and claws at your eyes without giving itself away just yet. How Jaynne looks when she’s thinking, framed by the light of Skaia and explosions alike pouring in through a nearby window. How you want nothing more than to keep her safe, because you've already lost one love today and whatever put you here took your ability to protect Aerith away from you (as much as you know she'd insist on doing it herself). You pull the hand Jaynne has in yours closer to your chest as if to make sure she's still there.

You manage some thinking aloud, the beginnings of a plan. Your free hand twirls her braid around your fingers and you take care not to pull, take care to hardly be noticed at all, simply close a metaphorical bond loop in the hopes that it will help you both, in the hopes that making up for times you could've held people close if only you hadn't split up will bestow upon you some secret. Her hair is so soft, despite everything. A single connection to a simpler time. Sweeps of talking but never meeting face to face. A dance that seems across space despite its hall being a short shuttle ride away. An urge to tuck a few stray hairs behind her ear when you were all together at the dance. Learning to dance. You wish a little that you could stay here, in this moment, without a looming sense of doom. But your thoughts keep tugging you onward; the peace you feel is an illusion, and an illusion you know well.

A plan is attempted and it almost succeeds but it turns out the universe does, actually, hate you, as you always suspected, and even in the heat of what could almost be dignified as a battle you keep returning to Jaynne, keep looking for her hand in the scramble, making sure you know where she is and what you can do. You feel the power that surges through you when you share an attack, feel your pusher against your rib cage each time an attack should've landed but sails past empty air and leaves a growl in your throats, feel each time she tenses up at the sight of the bitch you now know is responsible for so much pain. Even when she needs two hands for her pistol and you two hands for your ax you seem tied together, wrapped in a narrative nestled alongside other narratives. You struggle to process that idea and for just barely too long it breaks the very bond you're contemplating.

The break is microscopic but a nudge is all Ritizie needs and before you can comprehend the series of events, Jaynne is full of arrows and you're at her side and Ritzie is gone and there is indigo all over your arms and shirt and alarms blaring in every cell in your body. Jaynne is talking, not trying to be heard over the alarms she cannot possibly hear, but you can feel the sense of finality as if it was the same one in your own bones. You feel yourself start to freeze but you lean into Jaynne’s touch, one on your cheek -- whether out of instinct or memory or some magic draw, you don’t know, you’re too busy shaking with a rage that just keeps building -- and the knowledge that floods you presents options that you’ll have to thank her for later. In the seconds you shouldn't have but that pass in a breath (something in you laughs) for you, you almost kiss her, almost lean down to join the bond again, but that would put her back in the hands that have been hurting her and using her for their own gain and you can't do that, as much as your very skin craves the contact. So you do the next best thing. You cradle her against your chest and ignore the blood all over your body and fly her to a safety that'll be permanent, if you have anything to say about it.

Her body feels nearly weightless in your arms, even with the few inches she has on you; you're built for carrying things, for swinging axes, for traveling long distances (and being a god doesn't hurt); she's built with anonymity, for infiltration and gossip and a big smile that seems to struggle with itself whenever she talks with actual care. She's a high blood, yes, but in this moment all that means to you is that she's still gasping for struggled breaths in your arms and you have precious, precious moments that you couldn’t give Zierre. The thought sends a hot light across your vision that you can’t place, but you manage not to stumble. Jaynne’s blood is running down your arms as if to serve as an hourglass for what time you have left. Something in your think pan wonders if the trail you’re inevitably leaving behind in space looks like stars.

You cannot find the lake of glass soon enough. The space atop its tower looks like an altar, and you recognize the golden emblem across its surface well enough. Your nearing success does nothing to silence the rage in your stomach, but if you could you’d wonder if that was because you were taking that from somewhere else. Instead, you try to harness your thoughts for the first time since everything came flooding out, you set Jaynne down, yes, because this altar is her last hope, but you are not letting go. Letting go is what got her here. Letting go is what left Zierre on a pillar surrounded by icy snow. Letting go is what saved Persephone for the few moments you saw her but doomed Aerith in the same breath. Letting go is always where you fail. So you don’t let go. You kneel with her, take her hand in yours and if you were the praying type, you would. You feel tears on your face and there is still blood on your clothes but they are not sensations you are unused to.

You don’t know what to say.

You’ve spent too long running away, you realize with a poisonous taste. You don’t know what to do now that you’re staying. So you do… what you can. You try to read the fear in her eyes and try to tell her that it’ll be fine, in the end, because you’re here, and together you can try and save everyone else. You don’t know if the message gets across. Sometimes her eyes go fuzzy, because as the slowly growing indigo pool reminds you, she is dying. You grip her hand tighter. There’s a way you could make this faster, you know there is, but you cannot move your hands.

Jaynne does it for you. Each time she pulls an arrow out of her torso you flinch, watch the pool grow just a little faster, but surely, surely if she’s doing it, she knows it will help. It doesn’t make it any less painful to watch. Your blood pusher is beating louder than hers.

“If this doesn’t work --” she starts again, and you know what she’s saying is meant well, meant to reassure you that things will work out, but you have stopped considering “if” statements. You tell her it will work. It has to.

You cling onto every word she says despite that; she keeps mumbling things, and you comprehend them but not in the part of you that’s in this moment, focusing on her hand in yours and the way the light bends around you to bathe her in its glow and the slow chill spreading over her skin as the yellow stone beneath her slowly turns to indigo. You’re sure you’ll remember later. The static on your thoughts threatens otherwise, but for the first time you bat it away.

She thanks you. You pretend the phrase does not shoot pain through your blood pusher and you break your hold on her hand so you can take her fully in your arms, one last embrace before the inevitable moment that you will have to move. Her blood pusher is frighteningly slow against your hyper-sensitive ears. Any other moment, any other place, and you would be terrified; in this moment, on this island, you can only hope that her transition from death to renewal is as invigorating as yours was. There are words on the tip of your tongue as it slows, slows, slows, and as you pull away, but every time you’ve ever tried to say them they’ve simply dissolved, before, so you swallow them down. There’s no use in worrying her with them, anyway. Saying things out loud was a surefire way to cut them down.

So you play the waiting game, instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello there! i am very emotional! i have been listening to [nightcore dam dadi do](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SCQyBcHeDg) for three hours! which is why i didn't write the kiss into this version jfkldsa  
> this is also pulling from another version of this scene, a little bit, but u know that's how these things go


	12. from bad to worse to perfect!!!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> things were starting to go okay, for once. you really need to stop thinking that things will go okay, or get worse, or do anything, because the universe is just using you and your friends as a punching bag.  
> at least, until everything goes **oh so _sweet : )!_**  
>  (originally written may 24, 2020)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> : 3  
> we had a fun time today

You didn’t think things could get any worse. But you thought that before, too, when you didn’t even know that there was a murderer on the loose.

You really need to stop thinking that, actually, the universe always takes it as a challenge.

A few... however long it’s been, you wouldn’t even have thought this was that bad. You’re on a relatively safe part of the Battlefield, away from the war you can still hear happening in the distant part of your brain in charge of processing that mess. Jaynne is still next to you, safe for now (for now). You caught a glimpse of Aerith and Zierre, and your relief that they really are okay, it wasn’t just a trick of the universe when you saw them through Jaynne’s watch, is practically tangible. Nobody seems to be in immediate danger. Nobody is dying, not even bleeding! At least, nobody you know the whereabouts of!

Except that the air tastes... strange. Sticky. Spicy? But sweet? And something (Ritzie) tried to pull you two to the Battlefield against your will. And you were pushed here by a big explosion of something sparkly enough that your eyes still burn. Probably the source of the taste, actually, when you have a second to think about it. Not great. Your stomach fills with a dread that would come up as bile if you had eaten anything since you went god tier. You grip Jaynne’s hand tighter as something, a shadow maybe, pulls your gaze skyward.

You’ve been imagining what reuniting with Zierre would be like since you found out she was alive. This is not it. Because everything in your body screams that the troll in front of you is not the same troll you love. Everything in your body is rejecting the way the air gets thicker, sweeter, harder to think through. You’ve struggled to think in your life -- for most of your life, actually -- but the second the eye-strain colored, umbrella-twirling, compliment-slinging figure launches herself at the two of you thinking feels like wading through grub sauce and if you were, say, some sort of computer program, you would be glitching out of existence from the sheer overwhelming sensations that rocket your think pan to try to make you stop thinking, to make you pull in, to accept the embrace of whatever force is zapping Zierre around you, washing you all in bright colors and playing a tune you don’t _think_ you’ve heard, but that might be because you _can’t fucking **think**_!

None of the words being fired at you make it through to your think pan, but you don’t think they’re supposed to. They’re doing their job, scrambling any thoughts you might’ve had and pinning you between an instinct to run and the feeling in your blood pusher that makes you want nothing more than to take Zierre’s face in your hands and give her a big kiss. She’s just _talking_ , talking and talking and then you’re being lifted in the air, which almost shocks you more than everything else because Zierre, despite the color change and the new hair accessory you can’t name, still _looks_ like she might blow away in a steady breeze. You’re usually the one picking people up, except for maybe Aerith. The name makes a little spike of nerves shoot through your chest.

And then you’re being lifted and being teleported around, further deepening the dread in your stomach and making your vision swirl in a way that doesn’t seem... normal. Too much like an actual spiral. Too much like an --

You’re back on the ground but Zierre is hovering in the air, zapping around. The lights still dance around you. Jaynne is trying to talk to her, you’re trying to interject, but you feel like you’re freezing from the feet up. If you could feel your face, it’d probably be on fire, because somewhere in the little jabs and questions and comments Zierre keeps complimenting you, and you were somehow prepared for that least of all? Your thoughts start turning into questions? This can’t be right?

Jaynne explodes for the second time in less than an hour.

Except this time it isn’t in an attempt to save her life.

No, it’s the same sparkly explosion as before, the kind that leaves your mouth feeling weird and your eyes hurting. You reel back, stumble back a few steps. You rub the sparkles out of your eyes, and.

And.

And.

And in front of you are two figures of living eye-strain, talking and laughing and twirling around together in the air, existing faster than you can comprehend. Zierre is still there, as bright as before, twirling her umbrella. And the other is Jaynne, bright blue and reminding you too vividly of the indigo that coated your arms not long ago, except wrong, too bright, too _much_. You feel like you’ve lost them all over again, somehow, and your blood pusher threatens to give up under the pressure, cracking under the slap of grief all over again, because they are not themselves anymore, and you don’t know what’s replaced them.

This is too much. You’re trembling on the spot, unable to summon the will to move or talk or resist or even summon the wind, like you did the first time you ended up on the Battlefield. This wasn’t supposed to go like this! This wasn’t supposed to be like this! This wasn’t how you’d imagined this would go at all! The anger bubbles up inside of you, hot against the chill of confusion, and you almost don’t notice when the two start talking about you, almost don’t notice when they talk about kissing you, almost don’t notice when someone dares someone else.

And you’re not sure whose lips are on yours, but the part of you that clings on before everything goes sparkly thinks about how two of your three flushed kisses have been like this, someone kissing you when you weren’t expecting it, yet you welcomed it.

**Damn, it doesn’t feel so bad now, does it?!**

The grin that splits your lips is more than you’ve ever felt before, and your blood is rushing through your veins with a new vigor. You can’t even remember why you were so sad before! This is great! Things are great! You were looking at it all wrong, you didn’t _lose_ your matesprits, silly, they were just waiting for you to not be such a bummer! Bummers are no fun, didn’t you know? Zierre only wanted to help you all! And she did such a good job!

You think you’re laughing? You’re probably laughing! Nothing has ever been so funny in your whole life! And you’re with your two favorite people in the whole wide world! All together again, with nothing wrong! Even when Zierre tackles you to the ground, because you love sparring! And anyway, you can just get back up! Remember, you’re immortal! You keep laughing. It’s more like giggling, you suppose, but that’s even cuter! You lie on the ground for a moment before Zierre pulls you up, and you two are spinning, teleporting, and you almost go in for another kiss before something distracts you for a moment too long and you lose the thought to the sweet air.

Oh, you realize, Ritzie is here! And you’re pretty sure you were mad at her, but it’s okay! Water under the bridge, right? You’re pretty sure that’s the phrase, but you lose it as soon as it passes, like... liquid under a... Huh! But it’s fine, you don’t need to worry about it, because there’s nothing to worry about anymore!

You’re smiling, laughing. Smiling and laughing. You manage to give Zierre another kiss on the cheek, or maybe three? You don’t really bother keeping track, because who needs to! There’ll be plenty of kisses to go around and plenty more coming your way, you hope. You might be blushing? You’re probably blushing. Maybe they’ll think it’s cute? Oh, you hope Jaynne and Zierre think it is. Thinking about them is what’s making you blush, after all!

You bump into Jaynne! She’s soft and she smells like sugar and you wrap your arms around her before you can even really think about what you’re doing. She doesn’t seem to mind you weight, though you think you might be giving yourself a little boost with your wings? You’re not sure! There’s a delightful song playing in your head and it drowns out the sound your wings may or may not be making. But not your lovely friend and lovers’ voices! Zierre or maybe Ritzie mentions something about getting married? It’s a human thing, which makes you laugh more, because humans are so silly! You wish you knew where your human friend was, maybe she’d be able to tell you more about this marriage thing, because spending forever and forever with the ones you love sounds too good to be true! You nuzzle the back of Jaynne’s neck to muffle some of your giggles at the prospect, but you think it’s probably not working very well!

Aw, Ritzie doesn’t want to invite Aerith or Persephone to your wedding! She says that Persephone is too big of a bummer, but you’re sure with four of you she’d be no problem, and oh! If you got Aerith, too, there could be five against one! And Persephone likes Aerith a whole bunch, she’d probably come around for her! And they could get married at the same time as you three do!

Also, you want to hate-marry Aerith, you’re pretty sure you say! You haven’t even gotten the chance to really kiss her, yet, since she took off her mask! You don’t know if you say that part. Things are in and out of your head and you don’t bother trying to hunt them down. No time, no time! Because there’s a wedding to plan, a big wedding, and oh, knives, you like knives! You can make a knife! You do! And you think Zierre gives you a piece of candy? And you think maybe the knife you made was made of candy? The thought makes you laugh.

Your pusher is rushing, rushing, rushing, your face is hot and you can’t stop smiling and everything is so, so good, and you’re in the perfect spot to give Jaynne lots of tiny kisses and you think marriage involves even _more_ kisses, won’t that be exciting? Nothing in the world can ever go wrong again, you decide! Won’t that be nice, everything going swell for once? No more heartbreak or death or messy anger or, or, or, or other things that you can’t think of because you’re just! So! Excited!!

You’ll just have to find the others, you think! Kind of! Then everyone can be this happy! And wouldn’t that be swell? Wouldn’t that be sweet? You think so! Maybe! Are you thinking?

You laugh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yes they're tricksters! zierre is a strawberry sweet i can't remember the name of, jaynne is sugar (yes, just sugar), and clairre is candied jalapenos! it's very good and they're being very gay


	13. things are maybe okay

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a battle has passed, the dust is settling, and people are reunited all over the place.  
> regret tastes bitter on your tongue  
> (originally written may 30 through june 1 2020)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so context bcus i didn't feel like writing this part out:  
> in their trickster state, clairre accidentally instigated a pvp fight, lol. three trickster vs one grimdark and it was definitely not the tricksters who won!  
> and then persephone stormed off to go find ritzie bcus she sucks  
> also i don't?? know if i've ever mentioned vellka?? he's our space player and he's been missing for a while and he was dead for a little bit but he's fine now

It hits you… not like a train but like a very familiar fist.

Because it is one. The candy falls away and every inch of your think pan lets out a sigh of relief as the adrenaline high finally seems to leave your body. You've stopped crying, you're still shaking but it's hardly noticeable, you feel a little less like everyone you love is in danger (since it's only one person, now; you flinch a little while remembering taking a swing at Persephone's waist and make a mental note to apologize later). You take a big, deep breath that you swear comes out blue. You consider whether or not to be concerned about that, and decide it’s not the time. There are already too many thoughts hammering on the inside of your think pan and you push them away to get a grip on your surroundings without the red haze that had been clinging to your vision.

And you see her. Aerith. In front of you, alive, unmasked. A lot of emotions bubble up all at once, some old and some new, some uncertain in their own identities. One rises to your throat, sits on the back of your tongue, the one that mutated from surprise when she called you to help her what feels like months ago but couldn’t have been more than a day. You swallow it, because it doesn’t feel entirely constructive and you’re. Trying to be that. Yeah. There's a beat. You let out another blue breath. And then one emotion wins out, egging you on to do something you haven't gotten to do in ages and that will properly express how you're feeling. You take a swing right at her jaw.

It connects and it hardly even fazes her, as usual. It's comforting, in the way punching your kismesis can be, that at least that hasn't changed considering how much else has in the last… you decide not to think about it. You feel so much of the tension leave your body, and then she's wrapping you in a hug three feet taller than you. It's tight, but not bone-crushing, it's relief and it's exactly what you needed from her and you try to give back, though considering her height and mythical status you have a feeling the thought counts more than anything. She tells you she's glad you're okay. You manage to tell her you're glad she is too. The image of her dying dances behind your eyelids but you push it aside, because you have a feeling there’s something a lot bigger on her mind.

You wince a little. Maybe if you hadn’t given Persephone that shoulder punch…

Oh, oh shit. Your eyes turn away from Aerith, toward where you last saw Zierre and Jaynne.

Fuck, Jaynne. Another apology will be in order there; you hope you didn’t hurt her when you pushed away. The candy bullshit got to you in a way you’re not proud to admit.

But they’re fine. They’re fine, and they’re alive, and… Vellka’s also there. He’s wrapped in a whip and Jaynne is holding him like barkbeast, which you’d laugh at if his eyes weren’t flooded with that sickening shade of cyan. You vaguely remember fighting him off before Aerith showed up? And wait, didn’t he…? You shake your head; no use thinking about it too much, not right now, because you realize how much you want to pull your matesprits into a hug and it seems everyone else is on the same page. Even the leashed Vellka gets pulled into another hug, and people might be talking but you tune it out in favor of trying to suppress the things tugging at the edges of your mind with the sensations of everyone around you, of how everyone seems to hum with a magic energy.

The hug breaks, and the energy gets… somber. No, not somber, tense. Because despite the hug, there are still two things left unaccounted for. One of which… you look over at Vellka as the conversation turns to his unusual condition. Your mouth turns bitter; you’re never going to be able to look at cyan the same way. It looks wrong around Vellka’s eyes and the wrongness makes your skin crawl.

Somebody has to kill him. Something about breaking the possession, which makes sense; it’s probably not easy to control someone’s mind if they’re dead. And he’s got the magic god tier clothes, he’ll be fine. You’re not sure if you think that or hear Aerith reassuring herself of it.

Normally, you’d step up for something like that. Axes tend to make short work of people, and it’d technically be helping him. But blood dances behind your eyelids and you don’t… really want to break away from Aerith just yet. So Zierre does, brandishing her umbrella and piercing him right through the chest with an accuracy that seems almost supernatural, or maybe just… plot convenient. Either way, not fun to watch.

At least. No, wait. You hold your internal tongue. A sentence that starts with “at least” is one you don’t want to risk; you’re done being tested today, everyone’s alive and you aren’t under the influence of whatever the fuck that candy was anymore and that’s it. That’s. Not that’s not it.

There’s the other thing hanging in the air.

You’re not sure how you know where to go, having sought out taking Zierre and Jaynne’s hands as soon as you broke away from Aerith, but soon you’re all flying through space, off to find the last person missing from your group. Somewhere in your think pan you just hope she’s okay. And you’d think that much closer to the front of your think pan, except now the blood is back, and you’re trying to stop thinking. Both in general, and of the fact that you definitely did watch Persephone, engulfed with rage, burn Jaynne to death and nearly take out Zierre, and you did try to chop her in half, even if at the time you thought that it wouldn’t hurt her. The thoughts still don’t sit well with you. You doubt they will, because you’re just… broken that way. Not for the first time you wonder why you’ve never handled the thought of other people dying as well as the other trolls around you, the other bronze bloods who would defend their own lives but accept that the rust blood down the street was just unlucky. You squeeze the hands in yours. It’s not a comfortable thing to think about, and thinking about death while you’re all here alive seems like an invite for misfortune.

You shake out of it and you don’t see Persephone, really, but you recognize the big shadow gap in the universe well enough by now, after nearly dying at its hands. She must be inside, right? You look over at Aerith, who seems to think so, because she gets that expression on her face, the one that’s a little mushy and that tugs at her eyes. She has to do this alone. You feel inclined to agree.

(The squeeze around your shoulders you aren’t expecting, but that’s fine, today is full of surprises.)

Aerith steps inside the shadow, leaving the rest of you to… wait. You try your best to hide how much you’re shaking from your matesprits, because even though you know, somewhere, that they’d be nothing but happy to help you, the part of your brain that still belongs to a kid on the run refuses to open your mouth and say so. You just try to exist in the moment, or even in a different moment, like the one after Space Prom when you were all together and happy, if a bit hungover, or during Space Prom when you didn’t know… anything yet but you tried your best to cheer Jaynne up anyway. It does nothing to calm the shaking, but you feel less like the world is playing a trick on you. Everyone is here. Nobody is leaving your sight ever again, if you can help it, and you’ll punch Time itself in the face if that’s what it takes.

The shadows break. Things get lighter, a weight in your chest you hadn’t realized was the dark energy dissipates, you’re staring at Aerith and Persephone instead of at a big ball of shadows. Persephone looks… off, in a way you don’t place because the second you realize they’re both still okay everyone piles on all at once, lifting into the air and laughing, smiling, relishing the first time all of you have been together in far, far too long.

You’ll just have to give out those apologies later, you think. No use in breaking the hug.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm actually gonna throw out a quick sorry if this seems... off? it's been a rough couple of days and i'm like, not fully medicated rn so that's fun  
> i do have another fun idea that i'm trying to finish up soon, though, so if this one's weird hopefully that'll make up for it!

**Author's Note:**

> hello, dear reader!! welcome to the endnote of this fic  
> i'm pretty sure this will be the one that shows up wherever the fic ends, so here i will post my usual note! if you enjoy my work, i appreciate every comment, kudos, and even shares that i get! in addition, bcus you enjoy my work or if you wanna chat, see my other work, and maybe even get previews of this fic before they go live, you can find me at [thegempage](https://thegempage.tumblr.com/) on tumblr or [@achillopal](https://twitter.com/achillopal) on twitter!! i hope you have a wonderful [time appropriate word]!!!


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